The title of the course IH 704 at BU was “The Organization, Delivery and Financing of Medical Care Services: An International Perspective”. In the first session our professor Dr. Bill Bicknell gave a talk about the syllabus and the assignments and then he started talking about the health discipline’s dimensions and the definition of Public Health. During that session I didn’t feel good when I heard about his definition, but later on and after doing more discussions in the class I tried to feel better and learn more about his viewpoint.
Dr.Bicknell definition about public health was: The art and science of deciding who dies, when and with what degree of misery. He added we have very scarce resources and it means, some get and some don’t, those who don’t either die sooner and/or live in more misery. This is RATIONING - and we all hate to ration. Therefore, rather than face reality, we spend lots of time convincing ourselves that promotion, prevention, sound policies and good management can avoid the pain of explicit rationing. This is a comforting and DANGEROUS MYTH.
Monday, July 2, 2007
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